It’s conceivable that I may start posting regularly on here at some point in the near future, but in the mean time, here are of the few of the pieces that have been keeping me busy lately.
- News analysis on fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s visit to Cambodia.
- Thai “spy” convicted.
- Thai “spy” released.
- Fire destroys hundreds of homes in northern Phnom Penh.
- A wrap-up of the spying fiasco for Global Post.
A round-up of some of my recent pieces:
- The World Bank releases a report on climate change and the developing world.
- Congress hears testimony from Cambodian witnesses on the Kingdom’s human rights situation.
- A follow-up.
These articles aren’t mine, but they were two of my favorite stories of the week:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2009091628419/National-news/monk-accused-of-biting-spree.html
The Post’s monk coverage has been toothless for far too long.
- Just a few days after freeing American prisoner John Yettaw and meeting with junta leaders in Burma, Senator Jim Webb stopped by Cambodia for a few hours as part of his Southeast Asia tour. He was pretty guarded during his short press conference, but it was an exciting article to work on nonetheless.
- Here’s a piece I wrote a few weeks back about the Cambodian garment industry.
Jim Webb talks to reporters at the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Phnom Penh. (Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post)
Here’s a video I took of David Chandler talking to me and a few other reporters after his testimony at the KRT. He was very engaging, and is perhaps the youngest-looking 76-year-old I’ve ever encountered.
Original video link here.
With several of my fellow reporters either leaving or on vacation at the end of last week, I had the chance on Thursday to cover the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. While “fun” certainly isn’t the word for a crimes against humanity trial, it was a fascinating experience.
When plans for the trial were being drawn up, the UN insisted that it be held in Phnom Penh. Whether this was a matter of logistics or politics I’m not sure, but the Cambodian government responded to this by sticking the court 45 minutes outside of central Phnom Penh. After a long and dusty tuk-tuk ride, though, I made it on time for the 9:00 start. I was a bit nervous about getting in the media entrance because I haven’t yet received my press pass, but as I approached the security guard, I confidently flashed my drivers’ license and was ushered right in.
The media room housed maybe 25 journalists, with a handful of foreigners among the mostly-Khmer group. The scene in the courtroom was simulcast on a series of TV’s around the room, and everyone had headsets that provided instant translation of testimony in their native tongue. Thursday was a good day to start at the trial, as the witness was the eminent KR historian David Chandler. Rather than focusing on procedural stuff or previous testimonies, Chandler was asked more about his general perspective on the KR and on Duch, the defendant, so it was easy to follow for a first-time visitor. I took some video of an interview that Chandler gave to me and a few other journalists that I’ll hopefully post this week, but in the meantime, my article about the day’s proceedings appears here.
David Chandler testifies at Cambodia's war crimes tribunal, 8/6/09.
While I fear that these lapses and rededications to blogging are becoming almost seasonal, now that I find myself in the employ of a periodical, I’m hoping that I’ll have regular grist for content here (no promises, though). While I haven’t exactly been bringing the establishment to its knees (not yet, anyhow), you can check out some of my recent pieces here and here. Stay tuned.
Performance-enhancing drug revelations have caused stirs in recent weeks across the sports world. Receiving top billing on SportsCenter and in newspapers throughout the country was Manny Ramirez (the Dodgers’ power hitter was handed a 50-game suspension after testing positive for a women’s fertility drug he was using in an attempt either to regulate his endocrine system after a battery of steroids, or to conceive sextuplets). Receiving top billing on the cadre of dorky running websites I look at on a daily basis was the story of Rashid Ramzi, the Morroccan-born 1500 meter runner who won gold for his adopted Bahrain at the Beijing Olympics. Though Ramzi did not test positive for anything during the Games, athlete blood samples have been preserved, and one of Ramzi’s was found to contain CERA, and illegal doping agent that testers did not have the capability to detect until now.
These incidents made me think of two articles: first, an opinion piece by Chuck Klosterman on espn.com. Among a number of other witty observations, Klosterman notes that, unique to seemingly all other classes of people, professional athletes are esteemed in large part according to their level of competitive desire.
Fans are very unforgiving of performative failures, but there are virtually no behavioral requirements for being beloved: For example, there are a handful of active superstars who many people still suspect might be murderers or rapists. The only thing we truly demand of pro athletes is that (a) they never associate with known gamblers, and (b) they always, always try to win. Randy Moss put a kid in the hospital and purposefully hit a cop with his Lexus, but the biggest mistake he ever made was relaxing on Vikings running plays; his critics will never forgive him for being openly lackadaisical. Ron Artest punched private citizens who paid to watch him work, but I’d still want him on my team if we were up two points with 15 seconds remaining on the clock…
Now I certainly don’t condone the actions of either Ramirez or Ramzi – they essentially defrauded their competitors – but I have no trouble seeing how they came about. Elite athletes are encouraged throughout their careers to be ruthlessly competitive, and it happened that these guys embodied this ideal to, in both their cases, a costly fault.
The second article I thought of was one I caught in the New York Times a few months back about a new treatment that helps speed the recoveries of injured athletes – basically, the idea is that they take a sample of a person’s blood, separate the platelets and plasma from the red blood cells, and then inject it into the injured area. The treatment has received excellent reviews from baseball and football players (including some of the Steelers’ finest), as well as from endurance athletes like Olympic runner Matt Tegenkamp. I’m not at all opposed to this, but it points to the philosophical inconsitencies that plague anti-doping efforts. The only way this procedure is different from the illegal pr
actice of blood packing is it uses a different part of the blood in the injection. What is the salient ethical distinction there? Should we only allow performance enhancers for athletes who are recovering injury? If that’s the case, why do we condemn Andy Pettite for using HGH to recover from injury, yet praise Tiger Woods for getting laser eye surgery to improve his golf game? What makes one procedure innovative, and another unscrupulous? These are questions that fringe endurance sports like cycling and running, which have a longer history of performance enhancement than mainstream sports, have been wrestling with for decades, but they’re only beginning to surface in the popular consciousness. They could be rendered moot in the not-so-distant future, though, by the advent of undetectable gene doping, in which athletes alter their DNA to the particular specifications of their sport. In the face of this and other new techniques, we may just have to sit back and let athletes pursue their competitive drives to the furthest possible ends.
P.S. – Back in the day, riders in the Tour de France used to chew on bull testicles for testosterone – how crazy is that shit?
In an article in the Times this week, Norimitsu Onishi offers an absorbing look at the lives of Indonesian car jockeys – poor denizens of traffic-clogged Jakarta who are hired by wealthy car-owners so that they can make use of the HOV lanes. You ought to read it and judge for yourself, but in my opinion, this piece does everything that a great foreign dispatch ought to. It focuses on a phenomenon that’s completely peculiar to its locale, and manages to incorporate lots of color and quotes from locals. By staying so focused on these details, though, it manages to paint a comprehensive picture of life in contemporary Indonesia: the stark divide between the wealthy and the destitute, the informal economies that pop up where traditional ones have failed, the myriad problems brought on by a swelling population and urbanization that’s happened too fast. When print news outlets face cutbacks – as so many are these days – foreign bureaus are typically among the first things to go. The cuts unfortunately have to come from somewhere, but pieces like this are what we’re losing.
As loyal readers of the Post-Gazette will have noted, Pittsburgh’s primary elections are coming up on May 19, wherein Mayor Luke Ravenstahl (nee´ “Steelerstahl”) will be defending the crown against Democratic challengers Patrick Dowd and Carmen Robinson. Ravenstahl has committed his share of missteps over the years (using a Homeland Security vehicle to attend a Toby Keith concert, shoving a cop, etc.), but he’s proven himself an able financial steward, and his approval levels are high. Anything can happen in city politics, though – watch your flanks, Mr. Mayor.
Via Hendrik Hertzberg, an account of a luncheon featuring several dozen left-leaning economists, including Nobel winners Joseph Sitglitz and and Robert Solow. While they’re enthusiastic about Obama’s first 100 days, the consensus among them seems to be that he didn’t go quite far enough with the stimulus package, and that a program of temporary nationalization (or “pre-privitization,” as Solow calls it) is the only tonic that the flailing banking system will respond to. Solow acknowledges, though, that there will be difficulties associated with any such prescription:
“There’s no car wash that you come out of shining clean,” Solow warned. “There will be blood on the floor no matter what.”
